I don't want to smell like a cupcake. Ever. I'm an intellectual in my late forties, come on! (read it in a tongue in cheek tone)
But I just found my vanilla perfume.
It's dark. It's stark. Almost goth.
La Treizième Heure from Cartier opens in a haze of wood smoke and a healthy dose of birch tar. Think Naomi Goodsir Bois d'Ascèse. Complement it with the faintest whiff of earthy patchouli. I'm not a fan of this patchouli either but in La Treizième Heure... the subtle, ghostly, transient note just clicks perfectly into place with the rest of the composition. It's not a base, fixative note as you'd expect.
I've always told myself that if I found a perfume that imitates raw, fermented ethiopian vanilla pods, without an ounce of sugar, I'd cave. This is it. It's exactly that. No cupcake in sight, or if there is, it sat by the campfire, by the roadside, in a leather jacket, under many dark starry nights.
This perfume is more than the enumeration of its notes. It's black magic. It changes depending if you apply it on paper or skin, revealing an evasive, polymorphic nature.
French readers can read a beautiful text about it in Les Cent Onze Parfums Qu'il Faut Sentir Avant de Mourir.
Discovering La Treizième Heure almost makes me regret that we are easing into spring. But all good things come to those who wait.
Smells like the color: Black. Mood: Dark and sensual.
